Islamist Terrorism Became Global After 9/11, Rarely Directed at US – Chomsky

Islamist terrorism went global after the 2001 attacks on the United States, with the country rarely being the main target, renowned US historian and linguist Noam Chomsky told Sputnik.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Then US President George W. Bush declared a "war on terror" in 2001. A 2005 letter by then CIA Director George Tenet was released last year showing that the Bush administration had a plan to attack al-Qaida in its Afghanistan sanctuary and a worldwide plan that covered 92 countries four days after 9/11.

"In 2001, radical Islamic terrorism was pretty much confined to tribal areas in a corner of Afpak (Afghanistan-Pakistan). Now it is all over the world, rarely directed against the US, which has unusual security," Chomsky said.

He noted that the prime terror targets last year were in West Africa, in large measure a consequence of the France-UK-US bombing of Libya.

"That tells us something about the effectiveness of wielding a violent sledgehammer without looking into the roots of the phenomena. Putting aside quite non-trivial questions of morality and legality," Chomsky said.